Dark Horizon 4th Edition | Nøgne Ø - Det Kompromissløse Bryggeri A/S

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Overall. This beer wasn't on my radar at all but super happy to have tried it. Also happy to have noticed that it was a coffee stout and didn't leave it too long ...I've been thinking it was a non-adjunct beer like the other 2-fiddy I have that looks almost the same. Great stuff despite the ridonkulous abv, quite an achievement. Thanks again, Simon!!

Nøgne Ø's Red Horizon is not one of my favorite beers, but it was certainly revelatory the first time I drank it. It inspired me to try the less unique-seeming Dark Horizon which, while quite good, didn't live up to the mind-f**k that was Red Horizon.

Pours a thick syrup that is almost black, but still just on this side of brown. Some head but not much, and it doesn't stick around for long, so take those nice, long sniffs early on. They will reveal the usual coffee, chocolate (not quite bitter enough to be cocoa), malted grains that are also a bit sweet and rich like brown sugar and molasses, and more than a hint of anise.

The taste brings out all these things and more. The coffee is a bit more pronounced, but still hardly bitter - I guess it's more like a mocha. Anise dies down a bit, but a slightly briney flavor comes to the fore, which I guess a lot of reviewers might describe as "soy sauce" in stouts, but to me it seems more like seawater salt than umami salt. The texture is pretty good - thick, little carb, bold malty finish that's a bit sweet and roasty, barely bitter, and just what you'd look for in an imperial stout. Crazily smooth for such a high ABV, but not sure if that's a plus or not; if I wanted something that tasted like 8%, I'd drink something that was.

Overall, it's a very good beer in it's style, but it's not much better than many other similar heavy stouts and porters I've had. I shouldn't be comparing it to a drastically different beer by the same brewery like Red Horizon, but considering it costs about as much - $20 for a pony bottle - I was hoping for a beer that altered my mind about beer the way Red did. Not the case. Buy any other great RIS for about 1/3 the cost.

Bottle from Proof Bottle Shop. Pours an inky, lily black where only the thinnest edge is dark brown. Zero head or collar. Aroma is earthy roasted malt, burnt coffee, boozey warmth. Taste hides the high abv better than the aroma. Coffee and dark malt up front, a slight booze burn in the middle, that fades into sweet earthy malt. Silty, sooty mouthfeel, but I wish this had a richer fuller body.

250ml bottle, wrapped in purple tissue paper, and sold in a strange triangular black cardboard box. I presume that the runic-esque characters on the label translate to "Dark Horizon"? I am indeed sharing this with someone I think deserves it - me!

This beer pours a solid abyssal black, with the barest traces of basal cola highlights, and one finger of puffy, and mostly just broadly bubbly light brown head, which leaves some low-lying sheet lightning lace around the glass as it slowly ebbs away.

The carbonation is decently supportive, and under the radar in its goings-on for the style, the body near-full, dense, viscous, smooth, and generously creamy. It finishes on the sweet side, but in a well-moderated manner - the near-unseen 100 IBU hops churning away underneath it all, and the fruit, cocoa, coffee, and faux-barrel esters all kicking in for the cause.

I gotta admit, that when I first read the marketing spiel on the packaging, all I took from it was 'green beans', i.e. the sort you have with meat and potatoes - yet I strangely did not put it past this brewery to concoct such a thing. Turns out, all they were talking about was coffee beans, and how they start with 'em young, before they make it into this beer. Anyway, a well-flavoured, and weirdly restrained in its intensity big stout, which means that, given the metrics here - Nøgne Ø has achieved one hell of a balanced offering.